Fifty people ask the price. Two of them order.
A while ago we were talking to a saree seller in Dhaka who sells online. Halfway through, she took out her phone and scrolled through screenshot after screenshot. Every one showed the same comment: "price?"
Then she said: "Fifty people ask the price every day. Two of them order."
She spends a fair amount on boosting every month. Her posts get likes and comments. Orders come in by the handful.
If your page looks like this, the problem is probably not your saree, your photos or your price.
Reach is not trust
The boost is doing its job. You pay, and Facebook puts your post in front of many people. Reach goes up. Nothing is wrong there.
The mistake is in what we expect from it. We assume that the more people see a post, the more we sell. But between seeing and buying there is a step money cannot buy directly: trust.
Put yourself in the buyer's place. You scroll past a beautiful saree from a page you have never heard of. Will what arrives match the photo? What is the fabric like? Will I lose my money? A page answering those questions about itself is not fully believed. Every seller praises their own goods.
So those fifty "price?" comments are not failure. They show interest. Interest without trust: that is the gap between fifty and two.
Now imagine the same saree worn by someone that buyer already follows, whose videos she watches and whose opinion she listens to. When that person says how it feels to wear, it stops being an ad and becomes a recommendation from someone she knows. It is how we all buy. We go to the shop a neighbour recommends, not the one with the biggest signboard.
Many small sellers stop here, thinking influencers are for big brands. They are not. You don't need someone big. You need someone small and well matched: whose followers could actually be your buyers, who wears sarees, talks about them, and gets real questions in her comments. A big follower count on its own is just more reach.
A small test
We are not saying stop boosting. Try a small test next month.
- Set aside a small part of next month's boost budget and work once with one small, well-matched influencer. Keep boosting with the rest.
- In a notebook or on your phone, write down separately how many inbox messages and how many orders came from the boost and from the influencer's post.
- Ask every new inbox message: "Where did you hear about our page?"
Don't count likes. Don't count reach. Count inbox messages and orders, because orders bring in the money, and orders start in the inbox.
Here is how the sums could look. The numbers are made up, not anyone's real figures. Say a month of boosting costs 6,000 taka and brings 20 orders: 300 taka per order. Say one influencer post costs 3,000 taka and brings 15 orders: 200 taka per order. Your real numbers may be better or worse. Without the notebook, you can't know which.
The first try may not work. The person may not have been the right fit. That is still an answer, and it cost you a small part of the budget, not all of it.
At Brandhu we find well-matched influencers like this for small sellers. But you can start this test on your own.
We still think about that seller's screenshots. Fifty people come to her door every day, ask the price, and leave. Before paying to bring even more people to the door, ask why the ones who came didn't step inside.